Your Anna
by StrawberryFields4EverAndAlways
Summary: I was your best friend, Norman, and we'd grown to love each other. But you killed me. I was your Anna, but as far as the girls in the swamp go, I was only the first of three. Oneshot. Ending disregards the sequels. Rated for violence.


**Disclaimer: I don't even pretend to own.**

Norman, I wonder sometimes if you've forgotten about me. Then, I realize how silly that is, how impossible it has to be for you to forget me. You never forget your first kill, do you?

You were the strange, quiet boy who always stood alone. I was the only one that stood beside you. We were inseparable, the best of friends. Norman Bates and Anna Bennett. That's how it was, how it should have always been.

Norman, I never did like your mother, and I know for a fact that she never liked me. She was always so cruel to you, but you always responded to her cruelty with such complete devotion. I never understood why. When your mother died, Norman, it was my shoulder that you cried on.

The years passed, and slowly but surely, my feelings for you went past friendship. I was in love with you. I was sure of it, more sure than I'd ever been about anything else. In my mind, I fabricated the most blissful fantasy: you and I growing old together at the old motel. I should've known it was too good to be true.

We were sixteen when it happened. It was a year after your mother died, and we were sitting together in your office, eating sandwiches and enjoying each other's company. You were always so shy, and it took so much courage for you to finally come out and say, "Anna, I love you." You then hid your face in your hands, almost ashamed. I gently pulled your hands away and kissed you on the lips as gently as I knew how. I rested my hands on your shoulders, and you placed your own hands on either side of my waist so gingerly, it was almost as if you thought your slightest touch would hurt me. You ended your first kiss with a terrified squeak, and you looked as though you'd just heard something terrible, panic in your eyes.

You got to your feet then, and I looked up at you, perplexed. "What's wrong?" I asked.

You seemed very distracted when you said, "I'll be right back. I-I, um, have to check on something up at the house." With that said, you bolted from the room.

Confused, I began to admire your latest taxidermy projects. I was looking at a squirrel when I heard the office door open and close again, and I turned to look. Your mother stood before me, in an old floral dress, her gray hair pulled back in a familiarly severe bun, but I instantly realized it was only you in disguise. "Norman?" I asked, afraid of the crazed look in your eyes.

"Norman isn't here," you said as you crossed the room to me, your voice a pitch-perfect imitation of your mother's.

"Norman, this isn't funny," I said, and then you raised the knife. I didn't stop screaming as you plunged the blade into my chest over and over again. The pain was excruciating, and I wanted so very badly to die. At long last, I slid down the wall, lying crumpled on the floor, barely alive. I breathed my last, and the pain went away, only to be replaced by pain of another sort. You see, I died, but my story didn't end.

Norman, I thought whilst hovering just over my body, why did you kill me? I was your Anna, your only friend, the love of your life. Why would you do this to me? It took me years to realize that you hadn't killed me. Mother had. There had been something wrong with you, something that made you become your mother.

Still in your Mother clothes, you left the room with a satisfied nod towards my body, and you returned as Norman, the boy I still love. You froze, clapped a hand to your mouth in shock, and began to cry. You slowly approached my body, and, crouched by my side, you had a conversation with yourself, or should I say, with Mother? "Mother! Why did you do this? Why did you kill my Anna?"

"I always told you, Norman; she was a dangerous girl, trying to mess with your head."

"She was not, Mother! She loved me, and I loved her! What's wrong with that?"

"Everything! You are mine, you worthless boy, and no other woman will stand between us. Now be a good boy and clean up this mess, or we'll both go to prison."

"Yes, Mother."

You caressed my cheek one last time, closed my eyes, and got to work, quick and methodical. By the time you'd finished, my blood was cleaned from all surfaces in the office, and my body was locked in an old steamer trunk and dumped in a swamp near the motel.

I was dead, but I was always watching you, Norman. My body wasn't buried properly, and I felt that I could not go on to the afterlife because of that. So I watched you through the years, watched you kill two other girls. I couldn't help but notice how both of them looked like me. Both of them were blond, like I was, and had my height and build. But the similarities didn't end there. Elizabeth Thompson looked the most like me; we could've been sisters. Marion Crane's smile was hauntingly reminiscent of mine. In the end, both girls met the same fate as me, though Elizabeth was slaughtered as she slept and Marion was killed while showering, and both girls joined me in the swamp.

The crazy thing is, none of us hate you. We all feel so sorry for you, and not one of us regrets caring. Of course, Detective Arbogast isn't as keen on liking you as the rest of us, but he mostly blames poor detective work for his death at your hand. But I have feelings for you that Liz and Marion can't claim to have. You see, Norman, I still love you.

Now they are dredging the swamp, finding Arbogast's body wrapped in a plastic tarp, Marion's car, Elizabeth's safe, and finally, my steamer trunk. We are found. We can move on. I am on my way to a place where I needn't worry about anything at all. But I do worry, Norman. I worry about you. I worry about what'll happen to you. My story is finally ending, but you're the one who's dying, now. I know, because my last sight of this Earth was you, sitting in a police interrogation room, proclaiming in your Mother voice that Norman is dead, gone for good. I let out a scream that only I could hear, and everything fades to the most blinding white.

%%%

Norman was dead. Of course, his body was still alive, but it wasn't Norman who resided there anymore. The body belonged to his mother. Well, that's not entirely accurate. The body belonged to a part of him that grew so warped, it ceased to be him at all. Now, in this place of life after death, Norman felt as though a great burden had been lifted from him, felt freer than he ever had felt before. This, he supposed, was what it was like to be ordinary.

When he arrived in what had to be the afterlife, everything was white. The sky above him, the ground on which he stood, the birds that flew overhead, the singular tree, everything. Some distance away stood something that seemed separate from the monochrome. Under the tree stood what looked to be a person. Norman cautiously approached and saw that the figure was that of a girl with long blonde hair and a blue dress, both of which whipped about softly in the breeze. His heart leapt in his chest when he realized who she was, and ran to her. She was staring through him, unblinking, gazing at something only she could see. "Anna," he said. He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her gently. "Anna, snap out of it. Please."

Anna blinked several times, smiled faintly, and said in a whisper so quiet, it was more breath than speech, "Norman…"


End file.
